Manchester City: The Calm Before The Storm
By David Crook
We have reached a curious juncture in a frenetic season for Manchester City Football Club.
Up until this moment, Manchester City have been playing a match every three days for as long as we can remember. As fans of the club we have lived our lives by this incessant routine.
We have bemoaned the cost of the frequent journeys we have had to make. The strange faraway places we have been to – like Wales – are becoming a distant memory. The covers of the programmes we have bought and even the madness of four Wembley trips already this season are beginning to fade.
Spring has sprung. Those long dark winter nights have passed and all of a sudden everything is beginning to feel a bit different. We only ever seem to win a League in the sunshine and here we are waiting for the weather to turn and the sun to break through.
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This strange gap in fixtures has left us nothing to do this week bar make jokes on social media about the plight of Liverpool. The regime the City players have faced for months has ended. The train, play, train, play merry go round suddenly has a gap.
Players have availed themselves of the opportunity as it is presented.
Mendy has been taunting Liverpool fans in Barcelona. Bernardo has no doubt been doing his washing and taking down his Christmas tree. Ederson has been taking down right wing bigots. Fabian Delph has probably been racing his greyhound and smoking his pipe.
This is the calm. There are no stories of City. There is no secret training. The quietest few days of the season and rather than making me relax, it is having the opposite effect.
Now I have new things to worry about. What if in these days off we forgot how to play football? How do we get a full on performance out of a team just back from holiday? I know my first day back at work after a break is never my most productive.
By the time City play again in the Premier League, Liverpool will have played Newcastle and will in all likelihood be back on top of the table. City will have to fend off the referee, and Leicester to keep up the pressure and to take the title race to the last game of the season.
Quite simply if City win the next 2 games they have left they will win the title. Whilst failure to do this would be a blow, it would not be a crushing defeat. Our level of consistency over 2 seasons is testament to our greatness. Failure for Liverpool though would be different. This would be a catastrophe for them, leaving the Klopp reign with just failure as a footnote.
Should City do the unthinkable and win their next 3 games then they will have an unprecedented domestic treble , a quadruple if you, like Guardiola, include the Community Shield. In fact if City win their next 4 domestic games they will win 3 trophies!
So right now we sit in the eye of the storm. Waiting and waiting. Getting ready for what is to come with hope on our side and nerves running through our veins!